“Exactly!” exclaimed Ted. “Your Orientation sets in motion your experience: how you Behave in life. The Dreaded Drama Triangle is the result of a certain Orientation: the Victim Orientation. Let’s look at the FISBE for that one.”
Ted then drew another three similar circles below the FISBE. “In the Victim Orientation, the Focus is on a problem in your life.” (In the top circle, he wrote Problem.)
“Like when a Victim focuses on the Persecutor?” I ventured.
“You got it! Or when a Persecutor looks down on the Victim and sees that person as a problem.”
Problem Anxiety Reaction
Ted continued, “Even a Rescuer focuses on the Victim as a problem person who needs help. Remember, the problem can be a person, a condition, or a circumstance in your life.”
I recalled how I had focused on my infertility, my divorce, and my dad’s death as problems.
In the second circle Ted wrote Anxiety. “When a problem shows up, you feel anxiety: the Inner State of the Victim Orientation. The intensity of the anxiety might be anything from mild discomfort or annoyance to sheer terror. Anxiety—whether mild or intense—gives you energy for action and sparks your behavior. How you behave is always a kind of reaction.”
He wrote Reaction in the third circle. “Sound familiar?”
“Now I’ll bet you’re going to say that the reaction is either fight, flee, or freeze!” I said.
“Hey, you’re a fast learner!” Ted smiled warmly.
“That’s all too familiar, I have to admit,” I said, pointing at the diagram in my journal.
“I’m sure it is,” he said. “Indeed, the Victim Orientation is the approach that most human beings take toward their experience, by default. You spend a lot of time searching for solutions to problems. Problems are often the center of people’s lives.”
“That sure has been my experience lately,” I said. “When I used to go back and forth between walking on eggshells and blaming my wife, I saw both her and our relationship as problems. There was so much fear and anger and hurt—a lot of anxiety, I guess, like you said. My reactions went from doing whatever I could to keep things smoothed over to outright anger and blame.
“I can see the Dreaded Drama Triangle in my own life,” I continued. “Each of the three roles sees the other ones as problems that need to be solved. There’s plenty of anxiety, and it goes around and around between them, which leads to their reactions. And that creates the drama. Looks like this cycle could go on forever!”
“Yes, it certainly does,” Ted said. “The DDT cycle is very difficult to break—but not impossible. To find the way out, you start by recognizing two important things about the Victim Orientation: The first one is a delusion that lies at the center of this Orientation. The second is a false hope that can never be fulfilled as long as the cycle continues.”
Delusion and False Hope
I could see that Ted was on a roll, and I was riveted. I knew that if I wanted to get out of the Victim Orientation, I was going to have to get a grip on this delusion he was talking about, and the false hope that went with it.
Ted went on. “Let’s look first at the delusion. Let me ask you a question. When you react to something, what do you tell yourself you are reacting to—the problem or the anxiety?”
I hesitated. “Well,” I said, “I think I’m reacting to the problem. I mean, if the problem didn’t exist, I wouldn’t be reacting that way.”
Ted pointed toward the diagram of the Victim Orientation. “Okay, now look at the FISBE. Consider those three pieces—Focus, Inner State, and Behavior. Which one gets your reaction going?”
“According to the FISBE, it looks like I’m reacting to the anxiety: my Inner State,” I said.
“Right! The anxiety you feel comes from your way of focusing on the problem. That’s your Inner State, and that is what actually drives your Behavior. You may be feeling anxious because the problem exists, but the anxiety itself is not the problem. You’re anxious because of the state you’re in. So here’s the delusion of the Victim Orientation: you believe you’re reacting to a problem, when you are really reacting to your own anxiety.”
“So what’s your point, Ted? I’m not sure I follow . . .”
“Good question. For one thing, it’s important to know that it is your anxiety—based in fear—that moves you to act when you’re in the Victim Orientation. If you don’t feel anxious, you lose your motivation to do anything about it. So with a Victim Orientation, in a strange way you actually need a problem to get moving! To see why this is so important, look at how each part of the FISBE creates a pattern of behavior with its own results.
“Let’s start with the Focus: a problem. When your wife became distant, what happened to your anxiety? Did it increase or decrease?”
“When she did that, I felt more anxious . . . definitely,” I said.
“Right. And when your anxiety increases, what happens to your tendency to react?”
“Well,” I said, “my desire to react also increases—I want to get rid of the anxiety.”
“Okay, David. This next step is critical. If your reaction is successful—meaning that it has a positive impact on your problem—what happens to the intensity of the problem?”
“The problem seems less intense, if I do something that seems to help.”
“Good,” said Ted. “Now watch this: When the problem seems less intense, what happens to your anxiety?”
“It goes down. Things don’t seem so bad.”
“When the anxiety lessens, what happens to your feeling that you’ve got to do something about the problem?”
“It goes down, too,” I said. “I relax and take a deep breath.”
“Of course you would. Now here’s where the delusion comes into play. Remember when I said that in the Victim Orientation, it’s actually your anxiety that motivates you to take action? Well, when your anxiety goes away, so does your energy for taking action. So what happens if your drive to take action against the problem lessens? What will eventually happen to the intensity of that problem?”
“Well,” I said, “the problem might still be lurking around, kind of like a disease that’s gone into remission. I’m guessing the problem would most likely reemerge, and so, eventually, it would seem more intense. Right?”
“Right!” Ted exclaimed. “And when that intensity about the problem reemerges, the whole cycle restarts itself. It’s déjà vu all over again, as somebody once said. Any problem that seems to come up in your life again and again—whether it’s with an employee, coworker, a loved one, or even within yourself—is virtually guaranteed to get you involved in the Victim Orientation. You do something about the situation, it gets better for awhile, and it then recurs sometime down the road. It may take days, weeks, months, maybe even years, but it’s a safe bet that the problem will raise its head again in the future.”
“Wait! I’m not sure I get it. Why does the intensity of the problem go up again? Didn’t I solve the problem when I reacted to it the first time?” I asked.
“Almost never,” Ted explained. “A problem is rarely if ever solved from within Victim Orientation. To truly eliminate the source of a problem usually takes a long-term focus. In the Victim Orientation that kind of focus is almost impossible, because when things do get better, you lose that get-up-and-go energy to do something about the problem. Things get better and you relax and stop reacting to the problem, only to find it starting up all over again.”
“Yikes.”
“No kidding! This recurring pattern can last for years and years, highs and then lows, more highs and then more lows. I’ve heard plenty of people say their lives are like a roller coaster. So, David, what do you think? Have you ever fallen into this pattern?”
I gazed out at the approaching waves, trying to think of a time when I’d been on the kind of roller coaster drama that Ted was describing. I felt a little flustered, but I was determined. There had to be a way out of this Victim cycle. I took a deep breath, look
ed down at my stomach, and let out a long sigh. Then it struck me.
“Sure,” I chuckled. “It may sound a little silly, but it seems like I’ve always been on a roller coaster with my weight. The problem shows up when I step on the scale in the morning. When I look down at the scale, there’s just a mild anxiety, but I feel the weight of that number staring back at me between my feet. I react by promising myself to diet and exercise. I stay focused and committed for awhile. I start to lose pounds and inches, and pretty soon I’m feeling really great. My clothes fit better. My friends and family tell me how good I’m looking. But then something comes up, like a big holiday or a vacation. And because things are going so well, I celebrate by eating all the things I’ve been avoiding. The problem is that afterward I don’t go back to my healthy eating or exercising. After awhile, one day I’m standing on the same scale on a whole new morning wondering how all those problem pounds came back.”
Ted smiled sympathetically. “You got it! That’s how the Victim Orientation works. Your example may be ordinary, but unfortunately it’s exactly the same cycle that shows up in much more serious situations like addiction, when someone quits and then has a relapse. In situations of domestic violence and abusive relationships, a Persecutor or perpetrator hurts a Victim, then apologizes and pledges to not do it again. Things may seem to go well for awhile, only to end in some explosive incident that starts the cycle all over again.”
DDT and Victim Orientation: A Perfect Match
“You see,” Ted continued, “the Dreaded Drama Triangle is rooted in the Victim Orientation: look at the roles and their reactions. Imagine you’re the Victim in the triangle. Remember, in the DDT there are only three possible reactions: fight, flee, or freeze. The Victim may lash out to fight back when faced with a Persecutor. When that happens, the Victim becomes the Persecutor and the original Persecutor now becomes the Victim. Or the Victim may flee to get away from the Persecutor, striking out in search of a Rescuer who will welcome the Victim with open arms.
“Or the Victim may freeze. The freeze reaction can be to do nothing, but that usually isn’t what happens. More often, the Victim finds a way to numb out the fear and pain of Victimhood. Numbing out can be done in any number of ways—most of them addictive—like drugs or alcohol, working too much, zoning out in front of the television, or anything else that offers escape from feelings. All three reactions—fight, flee, or freeze—are reactions to the problem presented by the Persecutor.”
I could see how consistently the DDT and the reactive cycle of the Victim Orientation had played out in my own life. “This has happened to me so many times,” I said. “Like, all my life I’ve been afraid other people will leave me. I can think of lots of times when I was a Victim of abandonment, both emotionally and physically, and I lost an important relationship. Whenever this happened, I had a flight reaction: right away I started looking for another relationship to fill the emptiness.”
“That new relationship became your Rescuer—saving you from the pain you felt when you were left alone,” Ted responded.
“Right. This fear of abandonment has given me a kind of supersensitive radar. I’m constantly looking for signs that the other person is going to leave or that the good things in my life will be taken away. I start reacting to every possible clue that something is about to go wrong. I hate to say it, but I get clingy. I hold on so tightly and focus so intently on the relationship that other people start feeling smothered or pressured. They then react by getting distant from me.”
“And as that person grows distant, you see her as your Persecutor,” said Ted. “Right?”
“You bet!” I exclaimed. “She becomes my newest abandoner—my Persecutor—and the cycle starts all over again, just like you said. That’s what happened between my wife and me. When I found out about my infertility, I wanted more and more reassurance from her, but that only drove her further away. I sure wish I had known about all this back then.”
“Your story illustrates another important part of the Victim Orientation, David. Much of humanity is sleepwalking through life—moving through the day firmly rooted in the Victim Orientation and not being aware of it. It accounts for much of the tragedy of the human experience.”
Ted turned away a moment and looked out at the approaching waves. He picked up a gnarled stick of driftwood and threw it onto the sand near the waterline. Just then a huge wave arose, submerged the stick, and carried it away. As we watched it bob away on the water’s surface, I glanced at Ted. A faraway look was in his eyes. He took a breath and continued. “When sleepwalking, you constantly react to problems, even to your own behaviors. In the Victim Orientation, you want to get rid of, or get away from, your problems. But often the things you do to try to make the problem (or the Persecutor) go away just end up intensifying your suffering.”
“Actually, there were times when things seemed to be going okay,” said. “I mean, sometimes my wife and I got along all right, and we had a kind of peaceful coexistence, even if we weren’t all that happy.”
“The Victim Orientation can be very seductive,” said Ted. “As long as your reaction—be it fight, flee, or freeze—seems to make the situation better (like that period of peaceful coexistence), you tell yourself that your reaction is working to get you what you want. In your case that meant feeling safe and avoiding loneliness. But then, just as you described, at some point you noticed your wife getting distant, and you reacted by pushing for more closeness. Instead of solving the problem your reaction made it worse, as she began to feel smothered and pressured.
“So, reacting actually increases the problem. When that happens, life quickly becomes a slippery slope. The problem worsens, and your anxiety increases. As the anxiety increases, you act out to reduce your anxiety. That acting out—clinging or begging or shouting in frustration—only throws fuel onto the fire.”
“I get it,” I sighed. “My own fearful reaction creates the exact result I’m trying so hard to avoid: being abandoned.”
“Exactly,” Ted confirmed. “Then you go on to the next relationship and play out the same drama, unless or until you wake up to what you’re doing. As long as you’re sleepwalking, you’re unaware of this cycle. While you’re playing out the drama, you don’t see that what you’re doing is counterproductive—because, at first, your reactions seem to be working to keep your anxiety down.”
Ted looked squarely at me. “While sleepwalking, you think your problem is out there to be fixed, not realizing how your own reactions contribute to your suffering. You believe the pain exists out there in your environment, and that if you can just fix that—through fighting, fleeing, or freezing—life will get better.”
“Okay,” I said. “I get how I keep the cycle going and how my Victim stance feeds the drama. But what about someone else, someone who really is a Victim of circumstances beyond his control?”
“Oh yes. War and murder, starvation . . . While it’s true that certain circumstances are not of your own making, it is also true that the way you react to those circumstances—usually by trying to make it all go away—becomes the source of even more suffering and keeps the cycle active.”
The ocean waves were now growing in size. We watched the tide rolling in, and a wave began to build and grow. The wave crested, breaking toward the shore; it crashed into the sand . . . and wiped away the Dreaded Drama Triangle Ted had drawn. He turned to me. “What an apt metaphor. The wave just wiped out the DDT! I wish it was that easy to overcome the limitations of that way of being in the world. But the Victim Orientation is ancient. It has been humanity’s primary orientation for as long as we have roamed the earth. The urge to fight, flee, or freeze has played an important survival role, a vital evolutionary force. The tough reality is that the Victim Orientation and its mischievous dynamics will always be a part of you. But the Victim Orientation has outgrown its usefulness, David. It doesn’t have to drive your life and relationships anymore.”
I searched Ted’s eyes for clues. How could he be so
certain? “So, are you saying that I don’t have to react to trouble?” It seemed unlikely.
“That’s right,” he said. “There is another Orientation that presents a different choice, one that can only be made consciously. That next evolutionary leap will take you to a very different Orientation. But we’ll talk about that later.”
The waves were growing in intensity. Little by little, the beach seemed to be shrinking. My mind was reeling from all that Ted had told me. He smiled. “Perhaps the rest can wait. Can you come back tomorrow?”
“Yes,” I answered. “I’m taking some time off right now. I had planned on spending a few days out here, anyway. I’d like to hear more. When could we get together?”
“How about meeting at the bench up there on the bluff around mid-morning? Whenever you want to show up is fine by me.”
“I’ll see you in the morning, then.” I said.
CHAPTER 5
Another Friend
I sat on the bench at mid-morning, staring out at the ocean. The sun had burned off the coastal layer of fog, and the water, stretching out like a blanket buffeted by the wind, covered the earth.
My sleep had been restless. All night Ted’s teachings had churned through my brain like the waves crashing onto the beach below. It was a huge burden, realizing how much of my life had been spent caught up in the Victim Orientation. How many times had I traveled around the DDT, that toxic Dreaded Drama Triangle? As I lay awake in bed, my mind wandered from the mundane to the monumental, considering all the highs and lows of my life in light of this new viewpoint.
A few days earlier my flight to the coast had been delayed in Chicago, and like the other passengers, I was anxious to get where I was going. We were all victims of the weather that day, and the havoc it had wreaked on the flow of airport arrivals and departures. I remember how some travelers approached the gate agents as potential Rescuers, as if the buttons on their computer keypads could accomplish instant magic. When the ticket agents promised that they would only announce new information when it became available, I watched those same passengers begin treating the agents as Persecutors.
The Power of Ted Page 4